The best alternative to Microsoft Office 2003 for Windows turns out to be Microsoft 2004 for Mac. Go figure.

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Notwithstanding the love-hate relationship Mac users have with Microsoft, Redmond is, in fact, the largest Mac software vendor and has been so throughout the platform’s 20-year lifespan. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint all debuted on the Mac and were the top office applications on Mac long before they gained their dominance in Windows.

Microsoft, in fact, has expanded its Macintosh exposure by acquiring Virtual PC, the emulation software that allows users to run an instance of Windows on their Mac. Microsoft also continues to make its input hardware available for both the Windows and Macintosh platforms. Mac products continue to be a major cash cow for Redmond.

There also have been retreats – Microsoft phased out evolution of Internet Explorer for Mac when Apple offered its own Safari browser. However, Explorer for Mac v 5.2 remains available as a free download, and Mac users should get it so they can access those Web sites that annoyingly require MSIE.

The flagship, of course, is Office for Mac, with the new Office 2004 version released just this summer.

Because Microsoft typically releases the latest OfficeMac version a year after the most recent Windows edition (Office 2003), as a Windows person I had assumed the Mac incarnation would be simply a “me too” port of the technology. Not so. Office X (the previous Mac release) had features that were not in its Windows counterpart and, incidentally, were appropriated for Office 2003. Office 2004, in turn, has appropriated some Office 2003 ideas and, again, has rolled out new features of its own.

At the same time, Microsoft has
taken some pains to make sure
that Office 2004 is “Mac-like.” Its interface is consistent with Mac practice, making full use of the OS X graphics engine with its translucent effects for control elements. For example, what would be the formatting toolbar in Office 2003 is a free-floating dialog “palette.” OfficeMac users are spared the multitude of toolbars that are in the Windows version.

There is an interesting back-story to all this. In response to complaints from Mac users that they weren’t getting as many features as Windows users, Microsoft released Office 6 for both platforms built on a shared code base and essential identical in design. Mac users went ballistic because the software was both buggy and did not match up with the Apple interface. The problem persisted some in Office 98, and by the time of Office 2001 the two versions had regained separate identities. Office X, built for OS X was the best received OfficeMac in years.

As with Office X, 2004 is built around Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. There is no Access – the Mac database market is conceded to FileMaker Pro – and there is no Outlook – OfficeMac instead has a substitute program called Entourage. The absence of Access and Outlook alone give Office 2004 an edge over 2003. (Note: as with Windows, the Student and Teacher edition of OfficeMac now is, in effect, the home edition with the best pricing and licensing rights.)

Entourage is just a much nicer program. Unlike Outlook, it is not saddled with having to provide backwards compatibility for numerous predecessor programs that still lurk in corporate enterprise settings. The result is software that has the same mail, calendar, address book, tasks, and notes capabilities but is minus the hassles associated with Outlook.

One immediate example: Outlook users with multiple email accounts no doubt will be familiar
with the phenomenon of having one
of more of them misfire during a
send/receive. Number of times that has happened to me in Entourage: zero. Entourage’s system of “Schedules” provides a level of easy automation that Outlook lacks. Even the little touches are welcome: if you have a reminder set, it will alert you even if you don’t have Entourage open. Further, one of the snooze options for those alerts lets you defer the reminder to the end of the workday or the first thing the next morning (those times being based on your set preferences). I cannot tell you how many times that has been helpful on days that when my planned schedule has gone down the tubes.

Entourage X pioneered custom “mail views” – virtual folders that can be created around multiple criteria. This concept, in turn, is a variant of the “smart folder” feature Apple uses in its apps. You set it up, for example, to capture all email from a client so you don’t have to manually sort or search. The Windows Office team stole this for Outlook 2003, where it is called “search folders.”

The Mac Office team responded by adding a Project Center to Entourage 2004, which essentially takes the virtual folder idea and expands it to include contact and calendar information as well as mails, plus documents on your hard drive. You get the key information about your project at a glance.

My one major gripe about Entourage is that it does not include a import/export converter for Outlook .pdf files, making data exchange between the two programs a pain if you are not on a network with an Exchange server. At the moment the best solution I can find to sync Outlook on my PC with Entourage is to use a Palm handheld (OfficeMac includes a Palm conduit).

For Word, the Mac crew devised the “Word Notebook” document, using tabbed, “lined” pages modeled after a legal pad. This gives WordMac much of the same capabilities for notetaking that, in Office for Windows, requires the purchase of the new OneNote 2003 program. (If you bring a notebook file over to Windows, it opens as (and looks like) a conventional Word document – Microsoft isn’t going to let the OfficeMac team undercut OneNote on both platforms.)

While the notebook and the
project center may or may not
make their way into the next version
of Office for Windows, I guarantee you will see the PowerPoint 2004 “presenter’s view.” This is the presentation feature that users will great with loud shouts of “finally!” While your slides appear on the projector in their normal form, your screen gives you the information you need to present effectively. It shows the active slide top center with your notes below it, the three or four slides in sequence near the current one are to the left along with a timer clock, to the right is a preview of your next slide, and there are forward and reverse icons at the top.

PowerPoint notes always have been terribly implemented. You can type them in when you create your slides, but you can’t actually read the notes when you give the presentation. Now you can, while the thumbnails of the other slides help you nail your transitions.

It’s a winning feature in a likeable suite.

After acquiring Virtual PC, Microsoft incorporated it into the “Professional” edition of OfficeMac as well as selling it as a standalone. On the one hand, it is a way to help out Mac users who need to run special apps that only work on Windows. On the other hand, it’s pretty clunky.

A new Version 7 is being released that improves performance, especially on Macs with the top-line G5 processor. And the execution is solid. You can readily exchange data with the Mac side of your Mac, and Virtual PC ran the various test software I experimented with, including such things as Microsoft Visio and the control software for the XM PC satellite radio.

But for the most part the experience is like using Windows XP on a PC that is a generation or two too old to being running it – slow to the point where a user wants to scream at the machine.

If you are going to run it, you need to make sure you equip your Mac appropriately with extra memory and if you are buying new one, go for a faster processor. You really need to think of Virtual PC as a kind of stopgap that lets you work in both operating systems when you just have a Mac around and you have to run something in Windows. But for heavy use you probably will be better off to get a cheap or used Windows XP machine for the purpose.

I find it amusing that one can greatly improve the ease of use a Mac simply by plugging a Microsoft mouse and keyboard into it.

As it turns out, OS X natively will support a two-button mouse with scroll wheel as well as the delete key of a PC keyboard. Apple itself refuses to build its input devices that way so, for instance, you have to control + click to get a “right click” with Apple’s one-button mouse while control + backspace gives you a delete. Well, a delete in Windows terms – erasing the character to the right of the cursor – Mac calls eliminating the character to the left of the cursor (backspace in Windows) a delete.

That’s plain silly. It’s about maintaining the image of Macs as computers with simple one-button mice even though the operating system has evolved beyond that. Particularly dumb is the fact that the Mac is a multimedia-focused computer, but Apple has made no effort to work multimedia controls into its keyboards.

Besides, Mac keyboards and mice tend to look cool but be lacking ergonomically, so substituting Microsoft hardware is a pretty good idea anyway.

I tested the Wireless Optical Desktop Pro (the curved “natural” keyboard style) and the Wireless Optical Desktop (standard style keyboard) with the Mac, and both worked well. The current Microsoft color scheme of silver and translucent black may not be quite as stylish as Apple clear plastic, but it isn’t esthetically challenged either.

Microsoft’s IntelliPoint and IntelliType Mac drivers let you map your device buttons to suit your needs. The multimedia controls on the keyboard integrate with iTunes while the function keys properly map with OS X Expose system of viewing your desktop and open files. The software even sorts out the use of the Windows (which don’t exist on Apple keyboards, obviously), command (which aren’t on Windows boards), and alt keys (which have different roles in the two systems).

All and all, Microsoft has built a more useful mouse and keyboard for the Mac than Apple did.

(c) 2004 Al Gordon.

In addition to his computer interests, Al Gordon is a principal in the Boston-area strategic consulting firm, Mary Fifield Associates, www.maryfifieldassociates.com

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You can reach Al Gordon at:

al@tnpcnewsletter.com